November 2, 2002

From the White House, reports leak out about plans for an
Iraq after the Ba'th. Three of the main scenario do not allow for the
development of democracy in Iraq. Each of them is built on a racist assumption:
that the Iraqis either need a military dictator or else a monarch--any form of
democracy is impossible to imagine.

There are at least five scenarios, one of which is
considered verboten for the American Empire (it's #4):

(1) Iraq under the Army.

The White House occasionally makes noises about the Iraqi
military's overthrow of the Ba'th clique, led by Saddam Hussein. There are
several formations of former Iraqi military officers who now live in exile. In
July 2002, seventy of them met in northwest London under the sponsorship of the
Iraqi National Accord who claimed to be in contact with scores of important
military leaders within Iraq. The meeting included Brigadier General Najib
al-Salhi, a former commander in the Iraqi Republican Guard, who heads the Free
Officers Movement based in the United States. This organization emerged in
2001, was feted by the US State Department and by the London-based, US
sponsored, Iraqi National Congress. Of the 2002 meeting, State Department
spokesperson, Richard Boucher said it was a "useful tool."

These army exiles have been called up repeatedly in the
1990s, most recently in a failed coup attempt in 1996. They don't seem to have
much leverage over the Iraqi top brass and even fewer ties to the lower ranks.
Among them too there is a problem of credibility. General Nizar al-Khazraji, a
former Chief of Army Staff, now lives in Denmark. A leader in the Iran-Iraq war
who defected in 1995, al-Khazraji is under investigation in his new homeland
for war crimes against the Kurds in 1988. Even as he is eager to join the
military exile movement, they are wary of his entry, as they are of the
exposure of their own roles in the chemical attacks on Iran and on the Kurdish
people.

Iraq has a weak tradition of military rule. In 1958,
Brigadier 'Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel 'Abd al-Salam 'Arif overthrew the
British-nominated monarchy, declared a republic and fashioned the state after
the Egyptian Free Officers coup led by Nasser in 1952. Thinking that this was
an opening for an end to the repressive rule of the elites, the emboldened Iraqi
Communist Party set up centers of popular resistance (al-Muqawama
al-Sha'biyya), but Qasim went after these organizations as his dictatorship
incorporated, then smashed, workers' and peasants' unions. As the military felt
more confident in its power, it dismantled its opposition. Saddam Hussein, then
a twenty-two year old Ba'thist member, participated in a failed assassination
attempt on Qasim in October 1959. As Qasim alienated himself from the organized
forces in society, a section of the army (led by 'Abd al-Salam Arif and the
Ba'th) overthrew him in 1963 and set up the first Ba'th government (under the
nominal leadership of the Nasserite Arif, and then after his death in a
helicopter accident in 1966, his brother). The classic military dictatorship lasted,
then, only from 1958 to 1963. What followed was rule by the Ba'th, by its
civilian branch and by its Military Bureau (set up in 1962). The 1963 had the
appearance of a lateral shift by members of the military against one of their
own, when it was actually a take-over of the state by this Syrian born
semi-fascist party. In 1968, the Ba'th, who had ruled behind the scenes since
1959, took power and the new president of Iraq was Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr (a
military officer, but a Ba'thist first and foremost). Saddam Hussein took
charge from him in July 1979 (when he executed his enemies in a famous
convention of the Ba'th party). Saddam Hussein is not a military dictator,
although he has at his disposal an immense apparatus of force to undermine
dissent, to kill his opposition and to wage war.

The Iraqi military's relationship with state power is
fraught. What might motivate the second tier officers to conduct a coup against
the Ba'th? Many of them remember quite clearly how the US 24th Infantry
Division conducted the slaughter of the retreating Iraqi troops on 2 March
1991. After speaking to two hundred US military personnel for his article,
journalist Seymour Hersh notes that the assault "was not so much a
counterattack provoked by enemy fire as a systematic destruction of Iraqis who
were generally fulfilling the requirements of the retreat." Given this,
why would the Iraqi military risk a coup that might open the door to US action
anyway? What historical reasons do they have to trust the US government?

(2) Iraq under US Occupation.

The denials came fast after the press ran a story in early
October 2002 that the White House contemplates the occupation of Iraq by US
forces and the creation of an Occupation regime as in Japan post-1945. Close to
a hundred thousand troops will enter Iraq, General Tommy Franks will take over
as Supreme Commander of the occupied lands, the regime will arrest "war
criminals" and try them, and "de-Ba'thize" Iraq. The US Special
Envoy to Afghanistan, National Security Council's expert on West Asia, and a
point man on the aftermath scenarios, Zalmay Khalilzad conceded that "the
costs will be significant" (at least $16 billion per year), but that the
US will commit the necessary resources "and we would have the will to stay
for as long as necessary to do the job." When asked about the plans for
occupation, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "Should it come to that,
and the president hopes that it does not come to that, but should it come that
we would have an obligation to put in place a better regime," the military
will take charge. "We are obviously doing contingency planning, and there
are lots of different models from history that one could look at: Japan,
Germany."

Japan is the example most often provided by those in the
know. In Japan, the MacArthur-led Occupation dismantled sections of the fascist
bureaucracy, but also dislocated the capacity for the socialists to rebuild
their political bases. Trade unions came under the gun as MacArthur privileged
the zaibatsu, the industrial cliques that continue to dominate Japanese
society. In 1951, MacArthur laid out his basic, racist, theory for the
Occupation: "Measured by the standards of modern civilization, [the
Japanese] would be like a boy of twelve as compared with our development of
forty-five years." Because of the slow development of the misbegotten
Japanese, MacArthur argued, the US Army could "implant basic concepts
there," such as a respect for authority and for institutional power (for
an excellent primer on the Occupation, see the first few chapters in John
Dower's Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II,
1999).

The parallel with Japan perhaps fluffs the glory of the
Pentagon, but it is not fully accurate. The real comparison for the region is
the period of Iraq's rule by the British Mandate (1914-1932). In November 1914,
British forces landed in Basra, occupied Baghdad and Mosul, and set up the new
state of Iraq out of these three provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Afraid of the
Shi'i mujahids (clerics), the Kurdish brigands as well as the largely merchant
communities of the region (drawn from among the Assyrians, the Jews, the
Yazidi, Sabaean and others), the British turned to the old Ottoman elites for
their allies. The sharifian came mainly from the Sunni notables who lived in
the provinces around Baghdad. By 1920, the masses in Iraq revolted only to be
crushed by British power (over six thousand Iraqis and only five hundred
British and Indian soldiers died in the conflict). Eager to rule by proxy, the
British invited Faisal to become King of Iraq. The son of the Hashemite Emir
Hussein, keeper of the holy sites in Arabia and brother of the recently
enthroned Abdullah of Jordan), Faisal ruled from 1921 till 1932 under the
Mandate, before he inaugurated the autonomous Hashemite Monarchy from 1932 to
1958. While Faisal was King (but the British wore the Crown) the Royal Air
Force cracked down on a Kurdish rebellion with brutal force (the first major
aerial bombardment), and the British (with US assistance) divided Iraqi oil
among the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (23.75 %), Royal Dutch Shell (23.75 %),
Compagnie Francaise des Petroles (23.75 %), Standard Oil and Mobil (23.75 %)
and the legendary middleman Cyrus Gulbenkian (5%). The Mandate created the
framework both for the suppression of the Shi'i and the Kurds as well as for
the oil concession.

The desire for a return to monarchy was played out for a
few months in Afghanistan (with Zahir Shah), and then rejected in favor of the
pliant Karzai. In Japan, despite questions about the retention of a monarchy
steeped in fascism, MacArthur (advised by Ruth Benedict) opted to retain the
Hirohito dynasty. Obviously the US does not plan to remain in Iraq
indefinitely, but it would like to have a military base or two in the country,
a steady hand on the oil and a friend in power. That friend may either be a
puppet front like the Iraqi National Congress (the Hamid Karzai of Iraq) or
another manufactured monarch.

(3) Iraq under the Hashemites.

At the July 2002 meeting, the former army officers invited
Prince Hassan of Jordan, the uncle of the current monarch, Abdullah II. Perhaps
he might be the next king of Iraq. Also in the wings is Sharif Ali bin
al-Hussein whose family fled Iraq when he was only two, who grew up in Lebanon,
then schooled in Britain (he studied economics), and who finally made much of
an investment banking job in the City. Unlike the Jordanians, who are
circumspect about the war and its outcome, al-Hussein is the pretender monarch
with an eye to the reinstatement of the Hashemite dynasty.

But, the Hashemites have no natural right to Iraq, nor any
lengthy history there, and certainly no right by conquest. They came to the
throne on the backs of the British Mandate, and they took their posts as
puppets of the oil-hungry Empire. When the Iraqi elite classes finally
overthrew the Mandate, the Hashemites (Faisal till 1933, then Ghazi, 1933-39,
finally Faisal II, 1939-1958) asserted their role through the expansion of a
military loyal to them (from 12,000 in 1932 to 43,000 in 1941), by the select
use of the oil revenues (about a third of the budget at the end of their
reign), by the manipulation of one faction of the ruling clique against
another, and by brutal repression of any form of rebellion or dissent.

When Qasim overthrew the monarchy, he did so in a
clandestine coup without mass support. However, when he called upon the people
to take to the streets to support the Free Officers, the major political
parties responded, as did untold numbers of unorganized people. The al-Hizb
al-Watani al-Dimuqrati (National Democratic Party), the Ba'th (Renaissance)
Party, and the Iraqi Communist Party (with its twenty thousand plus members)
filled the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere to celebrate the demise of the
monarchy. The show of force stilled the hand of any who wanted to effect a
restoration of the Hashemites. That memory continues. To think that the people
of Iraq will welcome a monarch after Saddam Hussein is to entertain racist
notions of the capacity of those who are not Euro-American.

(4) Balkanized Iraq.

The Balkanization of Iraq is a nightmare scenario for the
White House. In the past decade, when the US diplomats arrive in the darker
parts of the globe, and when they say "democracy," they have
frequently meant Balkanization. If Balkanization was a bad word until the
1990s, in that decade Madeline Albright and other State Department
intellectuals adjudged it to be a worthwhile strategy in the Balkans itself.
From Kosovo to Kashmir, we heard the dreaded word "partition" once
again. But not in Iraq.

In Iraq, the National Security Council's Khalilzad notes,
"In the short term, we will reunify Iraq, because at present Iraq is not
united, and maintain its territorial integrity." What this means is that
the Kurdish autonomous regions in the north and the Shi'i zones in the south
(the "no-fly zones") will now be integrated into the fractured state.
Why must this happen?

The Kurds in the north cannot be allowed their
independence, because this will anger the Turkish government--eager as they are
to deny the right of the Kurds within Turkey to live as human beings. With
Turkey as a crucial ally in the US strategic plans for Central Asia and the
Caucasus region, it is impossible to foresee US support for an independent
Kurdistan on its borders. The two parties of the Kurds within Iraq recognize
this, they have made various accommodations with the Ba'th, with the Iranians,
with the Americans and even with the Turks to suit their own narrow attempts to
hold power in their strongholds. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the
Kurdistan Democratic Party vie for the affections of the Kurdish people in
Iraq, but they are at the same time far from the heritage of Shaikh Mahmud
Barzinji whose self-assurance in December 1918 earned him the rank of Governor
of Lower Kurdistan from the British. Even though the two parties of the Kurds
can amass almost eighty thousand fighters for strategic reasons, they cannot be
the Northern Alliance of Iraq.

The Shi'i in the south are equally impossible as an ally
for a future state. While most of the Shi'i are not members of any political
organization, the two most important formations are the al-Da'wa (the Call) and
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Al-Da'wa,
formed in the 1950s, did not come into prominence until the 1970s, when it
began to demand that the state be reconfigured along Islamic lines. In 1970,
the exiled Iranian Ayatollah Khomeni gave a series of lectures in Najaf,
appealed to the young Shi'i, who pushed al-Da'wa to fervent political action.
The 1979 Iranian revolution opened up new doors to the organization. In March
1980, membership in al-Da'wa was a death sentence from the Ba'th regime. As
al-Da'wa activists fled to Iran they founded the SCIRI in Teheran in 1982 and
created an armed wing, the Badr Brigade. Led by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the
SCIRI argues for the creation of an Iraq in the mirror of Iranian clericalism
(velayat-e faqih). Not only do they oppose a US invasion, they remember the
betrayal of US commanders when the southern Shi'i rose without the promised
back-up from the US in 1991--thousands of Badr Brigade fighters who went across
the Iran-Iraq border fell to the well-trained Iraqi army.

The US will not allow the Balkanization of Iraq, nor will
it allow the Shi'i to exert control of the entire state of which they are a
demographic majority. Unlikely, therefore, that the Shi'i and the Kurdish
forces will allow themselves to be used for a future that seems as bleak as the
present.

(5) The Arab Karzai.

Saddam Hussein was never the Arab Karzai, but he was a
close ally of the White House when it suited the strategic interests of global
corporations and the Pentagon. Ever since the "Seven Sisters" (the
major global oil conglomerates) got involved in West Asia, the region entered
US strategic plans. In 1958, the US went so far as to make an alliance with the
Saudis, to treat Arabia as an extension of the United States. The US-backed and
engineered coup against Mossadeq in Iran (1953) sought to preserve its role as
the US gendarme in the region. Of the 1963 Ba'th coup, its Secretary General
noted, "We came to power on an American train," meaning the Ba'th
enjoyed US government funds (alongside Kuwaiti money) and the support of
CIA-run radio stations that broadcast from Kuwait. With Israel's stunning
victory in the 1967 war against the Arab armies, it took over the role of US
subsidiary in west Asia: Israel provided the muscle, while the oil Sheikhs
provided the diplomatic finesse against the other Arab states. Iraq's
relationship with the US formally ended with the 1967 war in protest against
the new US arrangement with that state. With the revolution in Iran in 1979,
and with Saddam Hussein only recently in power, the US turned eagerly to Iraq
for an alliance. In 1983, President Reagan's people opened channels with a
December meeting between Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld. On 24 March 1984,
Rumsfeld met with Foreign Minister (now Deputy Prime Minister) Tariq Aziz, the
very same day that the UN released a report on Iraq's use of chemical weapons
in its war on Iran. The Pentagon was there when Saddam released his gas, and it
cheered him along from the sidelines (this is the context for Saddam Hussein
when he felt he had the "green light" from US Ambassador April
Glaspie to invade Kuwait for its lateral oil drilling in the Rumaila fields in
1990).

The US backed its new ally with arms and expertise.
"US" did not only include the military and the government, but also
corporations. In 1975, Pfaulder Corporation of Rochester, New York, according
to Said Aburish, "supplied the Iraqis with a blue print which enabled them
to build their first chemical warfare plant." In 1983, Aburish claims, the
US merchants and the Iraqi regime did a deal for Harpoon missiles and other
such treats to use in the war against Iran, in the repression against the Kurds
and in the invasion of Kuwait. As William Rivers Pitt puts it, Saddam Hussein
"is as much an American creation as Coca-Cola and the Oldsmobile." He
was the "factor of stability" until he over-extended his hand in
1990.

Is there a Saddam-like replacement in the wings? Is there a
real Arab Karzai? The closest candidate is Ahmad Chalabi, an academic who comes
from a wealthy Iraqi family. In 1992, in Vienna, a host of Iraqi exiles came
together to form the Iraqi National Congress (INC). Later in the year, in
Salahuddin (in the Kurdish "safe haven"), the INC elected Chalabi to
lead them. At the time, the largest constituents of the INC came from the PUK
and the KDP, and the INC troops, with US backing, began to engage the Iraqi
army in 1995. The next year, however, the KDP cut a deal with Saddam Hussein,
allowed the Iraqi army into their territory and sat back as they demolished the
INC in the region.

In 1998, the US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act to
fund this moribund organization. Said Aburish argued, in 1997, that the INC's
program "is utterly unrealistic," but "it still functions and
issues press releases to maintain the anti-Saddam mood of Western governments
and the Western press." The INC, he argues, contains many former
associates of Saddam Hussein and members of the Ba'th who conducted violent
crimes in the war against Iran and against the Kurds. "Because they are members
of a pro-Western organization," he notes, "their crimes are
overlooked" (this is from A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab
Elite, 1997).

Even as they have no credibility, the INC has begun to talk
to the French and the Russian oil merchants about access to Iraqi oil. In
September 2002, Chalabi told the Washington Post, "American
companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil." In mid-October 2002, the INC
said that "it would open the oil sector to all companies, including US
majors, and give particular attention to contracts made with Russia and
France." This was a patently obvious way of winning support in the
Security Council not only for a war on Iraq, but also for the INC to find favor
in the post-Ba'th future.

All indications point to the US army's Occupation regime
for the short term, then either a return to the monarchy, the creation of a
military dictatorship or else the formation of a "democratic" regime
under someone like Chalabi. Whoever rules will have to work under the US
dispensation, being the protectors of the second largest proven oil reserves in
the world (115 billion barrels) as well as the main political-military force to
counteract Iran and Saudi fundamentalism. The war aim is not to create a democratic
Iraq, but to ensure US military dominance over the area, and therefore to
enable the free enterprise of global corporations. Freedom for the Iraqis is
not in the offing, only free transit for the fat cats.

Vijay Prashad is Associate Professor and
Director of the International Studies Program at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
He is the author of Fat Cats and Running Dogs: The Enron Stage of
Capitalism (Common Courage, 2002), Everybody Was Kung Fu
Fighting (Beacon Press, 2001), and The Karma of Brown
Folk(Univ. of Minnesota, 2000). Email: Vijay.Prashad@trincoll.edu